It raised £744.40 and we extend our sincere thanks to all our hosts and hostesses for the use of their homes, to the teams of helpers at each venue, to those who donated raffle prizes and of course to everyone who partook of the Supper on the night. Thank you for your support; it is much appreciated.

We have just learned that we have been successful in one of our bids for funding! To give you this in full, the England Rural Development Programme supported by DEFRA (formerly the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries), and the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund, (I warned you it was in full,) have awarded us £84,610 ….. but……there are two conditions attached to this grant.

1. That we open a satellite Post Office in the Hall (as planned), since they are very keen that this should proceed and took it into consideration when making their decision. (We see no problems in fulfilling this condition as all arrangements are in place for this facility).

 

2. That we are awarded the second grant of £50,000 for which we have applied, from WREN, sourced from Landfill Tax Credits.

We are reasonably optimistic that we shall receive this second grant, (at the second time of asking), but if we do, (and the decision on this is expected to be made on September 10^th), we are required to pay £5,500 up front to the landfill operator to release the grant.

At the time this grant was originally applied for, there was a second funding source available that we could have turned to for the money to pay this amount. Unfortunately, because we were initially refused the WREN grant and had to reapply, this fund is not now available as it closed at the end of last month.

This leaves us with a significant shortfall because we have already made a commitment to contribute £8000 towards the works in our bid for the DEFRA funding.

During the past year, over £4725 has been raised for the Village Hall Refurbishment Fund; a truly remarkable effort which indicates that there is a will within the village to see our plans come to fruition and the desire for improvements to be made to our Hall to take it forward into the 21^st century.